Declining
by Alley Cat Sunflower
Summary: All is quiet in Hima the night before the Chosen is supposed to regenerate Sylvarant. After having been with him for awhile in more senses than one, Raine decides to tell Kratos how she's come to feel for him. She thinks he's angelic. She has no idea how right she is… until tonight. T for suggestive themes. I do not own Tales of Symphonia or the cover art!


The spark, quivering between the couple entwined on the cliff, threatened briefly to reignite—but something inexplicable had shifted in the cool night, within those few minutes since they had left Hima's inn. That lone cinder had become something like a star, cold and distant: as Raine desperately pulled away from Kratos—knowing that one moment later, she would reach the point of no return—she wondered, breathing hard, what exactly had changed.

A barely audible sigh reached Raine's sensitive ears after a pause, and she wished it were a contented one, but grief and weariness hung in the air beside her instead. She almost asked what was wrong, but stopped after the first hoarse syllable, unable to find the courage to try and penetrate Kratos's ever-present aura of solitude.

"What do you wish to know?" he asked eventually, staring up at the moon, which shed silvery light on the declining earth in a gesture of mock serenity. A twinge of disappointment—no, more than that; sorrow—resonated within Raine's heart.

She certainly didn't _want_ to have fallen in love, especially not with Kratos, a man of fire and ice. To imagine that their rendezvous had begun as a simple exchange of information for passion was nigh unthinkable, and it had been a long time since Raine had been genuinely interested in receiving more than merely his company.

Yet Kratos still answered all the questions she asked, however halfheartedly she posed them—though he often managed to make a single question last several nights by being vague or revealing parts of a whole. He truly was the most mysterious man she had ever known: though their dalliance had begun almost as soon as their journey began, she still knew very little about him—yet he insisted on answering her questions, and refused to let her leave without asking one.

Tonight, perhaps, he would not insist she tell him what she desired to know. If she was silent long enough, maybe he would let them both just _be_, bathed in starlight.

"…Why have you brought me here?"

Though his words were not harsh but something between curious and apathetic, they shattered the half-peaceful silence hovering around them, and Raine flinched as its shards flew past her ear. Was it not enough to let the night flow on around them—was _she_ not enough? Why did he insist on maintaining their bargain, which she had long since tried to abandon, until the bittersweet end?

"Why did you follow me?" countered Raine weakly, and Kratos closed his eyes, bowing his head. Features edged in silver, he resembled something otherworldly as he meditated, but the illusion evaporated (or perhaps Raine's lungs felt too airless to pay attention to it anymore) as Kratos glanced at her sharply, commanding her to _answer the question_.

"I—I just thought," she stammered, something like pleasurable fear flaring in her chest at the dangerous look in his eyes, "since it was such a nice night—"

"Our last, you mean." The calm understanding in Kratos's voice, tinged with something almost like indifference, stabbed into her heart, and she almost cried out at his interruption.

"…That too," agreed Raine helplessly, attempting feebly to laugh.

For a moment, she thought his expression softened in the moonlight, but found with a sinking feeling that it was as flinty as ever as Kratos looked back at her.

"Something's troubling you," he murmured, with gentleness that surprised her (considering the harshness of his countenance), and Raine's torn heart simultaneously sank and skipped a beat. There was certainly something troubling her, the same thing that had been all journey—but the way Kratos was looking at her…

"Of course," mumbled Raine by way of response, and stared at the landscape unfolding beneath the cliff, everything bathed in a white glow. The true reason she had come here after their final bargain had been to escape from the dawn she knew lay ahead. "Colette… The Chosen dies tomorrow."

"She will live on in the regenerated earth," assured Kratos, frowning with an almost concerned expression, and Raine's heartbeat rose into her throat. She almost seized and kissed him once more, if only to avoid talking about this, but instead she forced herself to continue.

"I suppose you're right," she sighed, looking over at him. "I've just been looking for a sign that I should let this happen—that it will work. I don't want her to die for nothing."

"I didn't come all this way to watch her fail." Raine couldn't resist a small and shy smile at his words, and though some might consider them arrogant, they were delivered with a serious conviction she wished all other men possessed.

"Nor did I," agreed Raine emphatically, and Kratos glanced down at her lips (she urged him motionlessly to kiss her) before looking back up at the sky with another heavy sigh as he laid on his back.

He hadn't seen fit to put on a shirt, despite the chilly breeze at the mountaintop; Raine, after an initially disappointed pause, couldn't help scooting closer to Kratos and looking down at him with ill-disguised tenderness—even if he was more focused on the starlight than on her.

"Kratos," she sighed passionately, half-consciously, her voice barely above a whisper—and she realized abruptly that she was on the verge of confessing the feelings she didn't want to admit even to herself.

He seemed to understand her implication, perhaps because Raine was staring at him with all the provoking intensity she could muster, hoping to entice him into taking her once more—but he only looked at her sharply as she lowered her head in a hesitant attempt to brush her lips against his once more.

"Raine, don't," he warned, and placed a finger lightly on her lips. Though it startled her out of her dreamlike advances, his touch lingered on her skin long after he withdrew his hand, and her name on his tongue echoed in her head: she fairly itched with the desire to close the small gap between their bodies just once more.

"I'm sorry," breathed Raine, blinking slowly and withdrawing her face, but keeping her eyes trained on his narrowed ones. "I've been silent too long," she added more forcefully, building up her courage. Kratos didn't try to stop her—Raine almost wished he would—but rather looked up at her with a steadily unreadable gaze.

Would the sentence in her throat make him stay, even when their journey ended?

"I love you."

The words, spoken softly in an almost grieving tone, practically wrenched themselves out of her, and his eyes widened in something like alarm—but he made no move. Perhaps to mask her own diffidence, she slid onto Kratos's bare torso (as close to his legs as she dared) and leaned over him, proffering herself for him to take a second time that evening.

Yet he only lay there, motionless, and stared up blankly at the sky; gazing into his brown eyes, Raine could almost imagine the gears turning in his soul. But when her lips grazed his desperately a moment later, looking for a response—any response—he pushed her back gently, his hand lingering on her collarbone. She almost believed (wild happiness thrilled momentarily through her head) that he was going to slide his hand around to the back of her neck and kiss her himself—but he only dropped it down to his side defeatedly.

There was his response. Raine stared down at him disbelievingly, still sitting almost on his hips, and his lips formed an indistinct name she was never meant to hear. _His wife, _she thought bitterly, and struggled not to scowl. Though the subject of his late and as yet nameless spouse had come up once or twice in his responses to her questions, Kratos didn't seem to have a problem taking what Raine offered—until, apparently, her emotions were involved. But was that the true reason he was distancing himself from her? Why did something as trivial as love matter so much to him, anyway?

She was about to apologize, mortified, when he sat up unexpectedly, dislodging her from his lap; she fell backward and caught herself with her hands. She noticed with a girlish shiver that she sat in the space between his legs, and that hers were almost wrapped around his body: they did not touch, but she could feel the heat shuddering between them. They were _so close_—and had been closer; memories from less than an hour ago pricked at her mind like insect bites.

"I don't love you," said Kratos quietly, flatly, so suddenly that Raine initially thought she had misheard—but knew, when silence reverberated in her ears, that she had not. Her breath caught abruptly as the night splintered around her, impaling her soul in all the most painful places. She found her eyes wide and her heart hammering against her chest, as if begging to be torn out so it didn't have to feel anymore.

"I have never loved you," continued Kratos stonily, and he rose to his feet, holding out a cruel and contradictory hand to help her up. Raine refused his offer helplessly: she sat on the ground, immobilized with shock, staring up at his silhouette in the moonlight. Every look they had shared when they lay panting next to one another was so proud and so _tender_—how could he say such a thing so bluntly?

"I _can't _love you." Each sentence was worse than the last, and Raine closed her eyes so he wouldn't see the tears welling up within them. She could practically feel his gaze burning into her skin, but kept her head bowed as she sat in the dust. "I can't love_ anyone_—do you understand?"

Raine _didn't_ understand, and she doubted she ever would. What had she done wrong? Was his loyalty to his deceased wife so strong as to ignore a living woman who loved him and had offered him everything she had—which he had taken with a seductive smirk?

Yet Raine could not bring herself to be angry with him.

Kratos chuckled darkly, a single breath of humorless laughter, and turned his back on her. "I'm sorry I've led you on," he said, crossing his muscular arms, and there was sincerity—perhaps even regret—in his voice. "Believe me, I didn't know you were honestly invested in our meetings."

There was a long and painful pause.

"But, if it's any comfort to you," said Kratos, almost tentatively, "we'll never have them again." _No, _Raine wanted to scream, _that's even worse._ But she remained still and quiet, hardly daring to breathe, waiting for him to leave so she could release a sob like the brokenhearted little girl she felt she was.

Raine had only had one other lover, and it had ended just as badly; the world was insistent on destroying her heart, man by man. The memory of his abandonment, coupled with her current situation, tasted bitter in her mouth; she swallowed, throat tight and sore.

"You said you were looking for a sign," added Kratos, glancing briefly over his shoulder, "that the World Regeneration will succeed." A tear slipped down Raine's cheek against her will at the thought of Colette's sacrifice, causing another pang to shoot through her chest—but she gasped a moment later, all thought of the burning in her eyes vanished.

Soft, blue, sparkling light flicked out from Kratos's bare back and unfolded into… _wings_, remarkably similar to Colette's. They seemed to present all his impressive strength in a visible form, simple but radiant, and fluttered gently, briefly dispelling the night immediately around their smooth edges.

A thousand thoughts and feelings raced through her head at the sight, beautiful and strange, and she rose to her feet almost unconsciously. "An angel," breathed Raine, and so much made sense in that instant that her head spun… but as she reached out a hand to try and touch the glimmering light, his wings flickered tauntingly out of existence again, and her epiphany vanished with them.

His footsteps made their contemptuous way away from her as Kratos stepped deliberately down the path to the inn—and Raine, standing there with her hand still futilely outstretched, was left in the silver darkness, heartbroken and disoriented.

* * *

_I ship Kratos/Anna as much as the next person, but I do think Kratos/Raine is unbelievably hot. Clearly, the only solution is to compromise: Raine loves Kratos, but Kratos loves Anna (though fourteen years without her might make him consider Raine, if only for satisfaction of a physical kind)—thus leading to this messy end.  
_

_Anyway, my grounds for the fact that he revealed part of his true identity is that Raine didn't react very much when Kratos revealed himself to be an angel of Cruxis and was instead much more focused on his allegiance (and seemed to avoid talking about Kratos at first). So, since Raine would still believe he was well-intentioned towards Colette at the time anyway, I figured he may as well show off his wings._


End file.
